MIND MOVES: The Leaving Certificate results are imminent. This is an important time. Results are important. More important is your reaction as parents to the results. So how prepared are you? How optimistic or pessimistic? What are your expectations? How will you deal with the results on the day?
Up to 60,000 students may sit the Leaving Cert in any given year, with examinations comprising a total of 800,000 written, oral, aural and practical components. More than 435,000 grades in 31 different subjects may be awarded.
But for parents of a Leaving Cert student, only one result in the world matters: your own child's results.
So, on the day of the results, as you wait near the school; at work by the phone; at home by the door; on your mobile for text; online, scanning the screen; what thoughts will you have? What memories of the past? And what memories will be created at the end of this day?
What response will you make to your child at the moment when they screech in triumph, or in the choking silence that says the news is not good? As they scan your face for a reaction, what will you say? This is an important psychological moment. It is the day you are tested. Are you prepared?
There are many questions that parents might ask themselves about their expectations of the Leaving Cert results. Are they realistic? What was their relationship with their child during the year? Were offers of parental help rejected or accepted? Were unrealistic adolescent reassurances given or received? Were repeated parental warnings ignored about too little study, too much alcohol, too-frequent socialising, too little commitment or too much procrastination? How will that influence your reaction to your child's results?
Will good results even disappoint because they could they have been better? With whom will you be angry about poor results: with yourselves, the student, the school or the points system? Will you await CAO offers, seek a recheck, propose alternative courses or to repeat next year? What way will you say this on the day of the results?
How will you respond if, as father and mother, you have different standards, expectations, different understanding of your own child's capacity, so that what one commends, the other criticises?
To what extent do your own exam experiences and memories of school influence your reactions? If you succeeded without assistance, you are likely to be angry if your recalcitrant offspring thwarted your every attempt to help. If, in your youth, you were denied the chance of education, you may resent how your children have squandered this privilege.
If you worked hard for little success, it may be hard to see success with little work. If you achieved brilliantly with minimal study, you may be frustrated by the fuss over this simple exam. In your day you did the Leaving and got on with it, so what on earth is all this psychobabble about?
And what are your son's and daughter's feelings as the day of the results approaches? For many, there is no fuss. They may simply hope that study paid off, that justice was done, that the last-minute cram provided some points, or the coveted place was not lost by a fraction.
For others, the anticipation is terrible, vacillation from belief in their brilliance to fear of total failure: preparation for disaster or rehearsal for magnanimity if superlative results are achieved.
Some students hug the hope of unexpected success to repudiate past pessimistic predictions made about them. Others long to validate kind and dedicated teachers or the love of parents who never gave up on them. Those repeating will hope for more this time. Students who were ill may feel cheated; students who suffered loss may grieve the absence of that parent to share their success. Some may be proud that they managed to sit the exam at all.
The results of the Leaving extend well beyond the exam to encompass the manner in which families negotiate life-cycle events, transitions, achievements, difficulties and the graduation from childhood through adolescence into the adult world ahead.
The results provide but one measure of one aspect of your child, but how the results are conveyed, received, accepted or rejected is important.
The Leaving Cert results provide just one opportunity to respond to your son or daughter's achievements this year. There is a precise moment when they perceive your reaction, when the comparison with brilliant siblings, the calculation of insufficient points, unspoken reproaches, the flicker of disappointment before exuberant praise will not escape them. Parental camouflage is impervious to adolescent observation.
What we say, or do not say, requires reflection so that on the day, we find the right words, words that will be remembered forever.
What will be remembered by your child about you, when the Leaving Cert grades are but a dim memory?
Marie Murray is director of psychology, St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin and author of Surviving The Leaving Cert: Points for Parents, published by Veritas.